Many people seeking insurance coverage for a property (e.g., homeowner insurance, commercial property insurance, etc.), may request an insurance quotation from an insurance agent and/or insurance agency. An underwriting tool used by the insurance provider may cause an offered insurance policy to be conditional on a result of an inspection of the property. The underwriting tool may determine that a property is to be inspected based on a number of factors including the age of the property, the size of the property, the location of the property, and the like. If certain rules are triggered, an inspection may not be ordered. When a large percentage of the properties are flagged for inspection, the costs associated with providing property insurance coverage are increased. An insurance provider may have a policy in place to inspect every property for which insurance coverage is provided.
In some cases, the insurance policy may be canceled, without consequence to the insurance provider, based on the results of the inspection. An illustrative insurance policy may specify a “cancellation window” (e.g., about 60 days) in which the policy may be canceled subject to results of a property inspection, where this cancellation window may include a time necessary to schedule a third party vendor to inspect the condition and/or attributes of the property according to standard industry practices and to provide a report to the insurance provider. Upon reviewing the inspection results, the insurance provider may then decide to cancel the property insurance policy. Such cancellations, while necessary to minimize risks associated with insuring properties, are unfriendly to the customer.
Therefore, a need exists for a customer-friendly method and system for identifying which properties are to be inspected, while minimizing the associated costs.